A Book of the Pyrenees

From 1425 to 1566 the county of Bigorre was wisely administered by the viscounts of Béarn, who had become titular Kings of Navarre.

Tarbes was fortified in the tenth century by Raymond I. It suffered destruction at the hands of the English in 1350 and 1406. But its greatest disasters took place during the Wars of Religion. Jeanne d’Albret was resolved on forcing the Reform on the Bigorriens, but they ejected the Huguenot pastors as fast as they were sent to them, and appealed to the King of France, who sent troops in 1569 to their aid. Jeanne enlisted the services of Montgomery. He swept through the country, ravaging it with fire and sword. He sent his lieutenant, Montamat, to take Tarbes, and Montamat appeared under its walls on 20 January, 1570. The besieged, finding it impossible to hold out, evacuated the city during the night. When the Huguenots entered they found no one in the place, and they pillaged the houses and set them on fire.

When he was gone the inhabitants returned and began to restore their wrecked and gutted houses and to repair the walls. Montamat reappeared, bringing cannons with him. François de Bennasse, commandant of the garrison at Lourdes, had hastened to the defence of the capital at the head of 800 men. Montamat attempted an assault, and was repulsed. But a traitor in the town opened the gates to the Calvinists, and the captain entered. Bennasse, all his soldiers, and many of the citizens were put to the sword. The number massacred was so great that it took eight days to bury them.

“This took place,” says a contemporary writer, “about the feast of Easter, in the year 1570. After that the city of Tarbes remained without inhabitants, and the grass grew in the streets as in a field, a piteous sight to behold. And three whole years elapsed without there being a garrison in it; but indeed the town was incapable of defence on account of the ruins made by the cannon.”

Peace was concluded at S. Germain-en-Laye on 15 May, 1570, and it was hoped that tranquillity would ensue. But this was not to be. Passions had been wrought to frenzy, and the thirst for revenge was consuming. The death of Jeanne d’Albret in 1579 did not allay the troubles. In 1592 the town became the prey of the Leaguers of Cominges, and from it they issued to devastate the surrounding country, till expelled in 1594. Almost the whole population of Cominges had embraced the cause of the League. “There was never before seen such disorder, such pillage, from the beginning of these wars. Captains, soldiers, valets, and volunteers were so laden with furniture that they were carrying off that they complained it was a trouble to them to be encumbered with so much spoil. Moreover, in despair, the peasants of Bigorre abandoned the cultivation of the land, and many migrated into Spain.”

In 1594 the people themselves rose, and, assisted by Caumont de la Force, delivered themselves from both Leaguers and Protestants, and peace was celebrated at Tarbes.

On 12 March, 1814, a combat took place between the English and Portuguese under Wellington, and the French under Soult. After the defeat of Orthez Soult had withdrawn his dispirited soldiers along both banks of the Adour, steadily pursued by Wellington.

“A light division,” says Allison, “and hussars were on the right bank of the Adour; but when they approached the town, a simultaneous movement was made by Hill with the right wing, and Clinton on the left, to envelope and cut off Harispe and Villatte’s divisions, which formed the French rearguard in occupation of it.

“The combat began at twelve o’clock by a violent fire from Hill’s artillery on the right, which was immediately re-echoed in still louder tones by Clinton on the left; while Alton, with the light division, assailed the centre. The French fought stoutly, and, mistaking the British rifle battalions, from their dark uniforms, to be Portuguese, let them come up to the very muzzles of their guns. But the rifles were hardy veterans, inured to victory; and at length Harispe’s men, unable to stand their deadly point-blank fire, broke and fled. If Clinton’s men on the left had been up at this moment, the French would have been totally destroyed; for Hill had, at the same moment, driven back Villate on the right, and the plain beyond Tarbes was covered with a confused mass of fugitives, closely followed by the shouting of victorious British. But Clinton’s troops, notwithstanding the utmost efforts, had not been able to get up; the numerous ditches and hedges which intersected the plain rendered all pursuit impossible; and thus the French, though utterly broken, succeeded with very little loss in reaching a ridge, three miles distant, when Clauzel, who, with four divisions, was drawn up to receive them, immediately opened fire from all his batteries upon the allies.”

During the night Soult retired in two columns, and such was the rapidity of his retreat that he reached Toulouse in four days.

A native of Tarbes, of whom the town has no occasion to boast, was Bertrand Barrère, born 10 September, 1755. He was educated for the Bar at Toulouse, and became a scrivener at Toul. As his father owned a pretty estate at Vieuzac, in the Valley of Argelez, he called himself Barrère de Vieuzac, flattering himself that by this feudal addition to his name he might pass for a gentleman. He was sent as deputy for Bigorre to the States-General. Being totally devoid of principle, when the result of a parliamentary struggle could not be foreseen he took the precaution of having in his pocket two speeches, written in opposed senses, so that he could always jump in the direction taken by the cat. Barrère had affected the moderate principles of the Girondists, till he saw that the extremists were the strongest, and then he threw in his lot with the Mountain, and voted for the execution of the King. Then seeing that the current ran strong against the Girondists, he took the foremost place in procuring the condemnation to the scaffold of those with whom he had previously acted in concert. He it was who was set up in the convention to call for the blood of the Queen. On the day on which Marie Antoinette was dragged to execution Barrère regaled Robespierre and other Jacobins at a tavern.

“In the intervals between the Beaume and the Champagne, between the ragout of thrushes and the partridges with truffles, he fervently preached his new political creed. ‘The vessel of the Revolution,’ he said, ‘can float into port only on waves of blood. We must begin with the members of the National Assembly and of the Legislative Assembly. That rubbish must be swept away.’”

The Reign of Terror began. The Jacobins had prevailed all along the line. The Convention was reduced to silence. The sovereignty had passed to the Committee of Public Safety. Six persons held the chief power in the small cabinet which domineered over France: Robespierre, Saint Just, Couthon, Collot, Billaud, and Barrère who had hastily divested himself of his territorial appendix of De Vieuzac. Of the horrors of those days it is unnecessary to speak. As guilty as Robespierre or Couthon was the bland, timorous, unscrupulous Barrère. He it was who proposed the burning of the towns and villages of the Vendéeans, the total destruction of Lyons, the violation of the royal graves at S. Denys, the deportation of all such as could not bring irrecusable proof of patriotism since 1792. He became the declared adversary of Danton when he found it safe to take that part, and proposed his arrest on the 9th Thermidor. He contributed powerfully to the fall of Robespierre; but he had made so many enemies, was so little trusted, that instead of rising higher by the fall of Robespierre, he found himself unable to maintain his balance. He was denounced before the revolutionary tribunal, along with Collot d’Herbois and Billaud-Varennes, and was sentenced to be deported to the pestilential swamps of Cayenne, but obtained the change of his destination to the Isle of Oléron. After having sacrificed his old allies, the Hébertistes, the Dantonistes, and the Robespierristes, he himself had fallen. When moved later from Oléron to Saintes, he succeeded in escaping from prison. The coup d’état of the eighteenth Brumaire restored him to liberty. We need not follow in detail his further adventures. When Louis XVIII gained the throne of his ancestors by the aid of foreign bayonets, Barrère fled to Brussels. The revolution of July put an end to his exile, and he returned to the south of France, and settled at Argelez, where he died 14 January, 1841.

His memoirs in four volumes were published under the editorship of Hippolyte Carnot and David d’Angers, in 1843. They are replete with disingenuousness in the representation of the part he played, as also of falsehoods, that can be proved to be such by reference to the contemporary files of the Moniteur.

Macaulay, at the opening of his long and brilliant essay on Barrère, says: —

“Our opinion is this: that Barrère approached nearer than any person mentioned in history or fiction, whether man or devil, to the idea of consummate and universal depravity. In him the qualities which are the proper objects of hatred, and the qualities which are the proper objects of contempt, preserve an exquisite and absolute harmony. In almost every particular sort of wickedness he has had rivals. His sensuality was immoderate; but this was a failing common to him with many great and amiable men. There have been many men as cowardly as he, some as cruel, a few as mean, a few as impudent. There may also have been as great liars, though we never met with them or read of them. But when we put everything together – sensuality, paltroonery, baseness, effrontery, mendacity, barbarity – the result is something which in a novel we would condemn as a caricature, and to which, we venture to say, no parallel can be found in history.”

At the close of the article Macaulay says in reference to Hippolyte Carnot, who states that Barrère was at no time a sceptic, that he was the author of a pious treatise, entitled, Of Christianity and its Influence, as also of a book of meditations on the Psalms: —

“This makes the character complete. Whatsoever things are false, whatsoever things are dishonest, whatsoever things are unjust, whatsoever things are impure, whatsoever things are hateful, whatsoever things are of evil report; if there be any vice, and if there be any infamy, all these things, we knew, were blended in Barrère. But one thing was still wanting, and that M. Hippolyte Carnot has supplied. When to such an assemblage of qualities a high profession of piety is added, the effect is overpowering.

“We have no pleasure in seeing human nature thus degraded. We turn with disgust from the filthy and spiteful Yahoos of the fiction; and the filthiest and most spiteful Yahoo of the fiction was a noble creature when compared with the Barrère of history. But what is no pleasure M. Carnot has made a duty. It is no light thing that a man in high and honourable public trust should come forward to demand approbation for a life black with every sort of wickedness, and unredeemed by a single virtue. This M. Hippolyte Carnot has done. By attempting to enshrine this Jacobin carrion, he has forced us to gibbet it; and we may venture to say that, from the eminence of infamy on which we have placed it, he will not easily take it down.”

Strange irony of fate. In Barrère’s native town, his victim, Danton, only less detestable than himself, is glorified with a monument, a statue in bronze. After Danton, perhaps Tarbes will erect one to Barrère.

CHAPTER XIII

BAGNÈRES

Visitors and residents – Pic du Midi – Ramond – Springs – Captain Lizier – Observatory – Vaussenat and Nansouty – Death of the former – Val de Campan – Château d’Asté – The Grammont family – La belle Corisande – Philibert de Grammont – His memoirs – Larrey – Marbles – The Lac bleu – Slate quarries – The Cagots – Caput Mortuum – Lepers – Recuperative power of Nature – Efforts of the Church to break down the barrier – Crestiaas.

Bagnères de Bigorre is a town, but it is country as well; it has the amusements and dissipations provided by a place of public resort, but it has also lovely and quiet resting-places in mountain solitudes.

It swarms during the season with water-drinkers, bathers, loungers, ladies who wear elegant toilettes, and bucks turned out by the best Parisian tailors. But it also contains marble works, linen factories, and women who are skilful at the knitting of the so-called Barèges shawls. The wool is from Spain, the finest Merino, and this enables them to make the shawls delicate as lace.

To the south lie the mountains rising steeply, and commanded by the Pic du Midi. For long a rivalry existed between the Bigorriens and they of Roussillon as to whether the Pic du Midi or the Canigou was the loftiest mountain of the Pyrenean chain; indeed, some claimed for each that it was the highest peak in Europe. In both cases the mistake was due to the position of each mountain starting boldly out of the plain.

It was due to Ramond that the Pic du Midi was forced to lower its pretensions. In 1787 this secretary of the Cardinal de Rohan ascended the mountain, and on reaching the summit, and seeing before him to the south the perpetual snows of the gleaming glaciers above the Cirque of Gavarnie, he realized what had not before been suspected, that the Pic du Midi was but a mountain of the second order. Then the inspiration took him to explore the whole range. He was engaged for fifteen years on the task, and he was the first to reveal to French people what the Pyrenees really were. Till he had explored them they knew nothing about the chains save what they saw from the plains, and from the passes leading into Spain, for at that time no roads had been engineered up the gorges. The visitor went no farther than to Laruns in the Val d’Ossau, and Pierrefite in that of Argelez, unless he committed himself to a guide, and mounted a mule, and was led over wild heights along mere tracks.

The explorations of Ramond and his successors have been recorded with humour by H. Béraldi in his book, Cent ans aux Pyrenees: —

“He accomplished,” says Ardouin-Dumazet, “that which ought to have been done for the Alps; they also were undiscovered, scientifically, till the year 1787. For, be it observed, Ramond received his inspiration on the top of the Pic du Midi, in the same year in which Saussure reached the summit of Mont Blanc, along with Jacques Balmat.”

The mountains rising steeply to the south of Bagnères render the place cool in summer, when some of the sun is cut off; but it is a dreary residence in the winter, for the same reason.

There are springs of various temperatures and mineral components, ferruginous, sulphurous, etc., advertised as good for nearly every complaint under the sun. It was the Roman Aquæ Convenarum, and visitors may now bathe in the marble basins in which Gallo-Roman ladies and gentlemen dipped. Bagnères was always a town, and in the Hôtel de Ville are preserved archives containing much relative to the history of the place; among these is a charter of Esquirat, Count of Bigorre, confirming the customs and liberties of Bagnères, dated 1251.

The history of the town is one of untroubled serenity till the times of the Wars of Religion. Captain Lizier, the Huguenot, on occupying Tarbes, imposed a heavy subsidy on the neighbouring towns, Bagnères included. But Bagnères demurred to raising the contribution demanded. Lizier marched to it, got hold of the governor, Beaudéan, and shot him. The people of Bagnères resolved on revenge. They drew the terrible captain into an ambuscade and killed him to the shout of “Remember Beaudéan!”

On the summit of the Pic du Midi is an observatory, erected by the energy of two men: Vaussenat and General Nansouty. Vaussenat was a native of Grenoble, born of a labouring family in 1837. He was admitted into the school of arts, and traded at Aix, and on leaving it was engaged in search for metals in Savoy. But summoned to the Pyrenees to manage some mines there, he married a niece of a general at Bagnères, and settled there. He saw, what indeed others had seen before him, that the Pic was admirably suited for a meteorological observatory, but he could not induce the Government to take any steps towards its construction. However, he managed to communicate his enthusiasm to General Nansouty, and between them the foundations were laid and the work was begun. The general took up his abode in the cabin of Sencours, just below the terminal cone, where he passed winter and summer registering his observations, whilst Vaussenat travelled through France, lecturing, exhorting, wringing money for the work out of learned societies and from generous individuals. Nansouty underwent great hardships. On one occasion, in December, 1874, a furious tempest burst over the refuge of Sencours, and twelve feet of snow was heaped on the roof, one of the windows was blown in, and the door gave way. It was absolutely necessary to quit the place. Nansouty, aided by his two companions, took seventeen hours struggling through the snow to reach the bottom, a distance that can easily be mounted in two hours and a half.

The observatory was completed in 1882, and was made over by these two energetic men to the State, whereupon Vaussenat was appointed director of the observatory. He lived till 1891, when he fell ill in it. He was being conveyed down the mountain, when one of the bearers slipped, and Vaussenat was flung down a steep descent of ice. He was taken up and carried to Bagnères, where he succumbed eight days after.

Bagnères is at the mouth of the Val de Campan. In it are the ivy-mantled ruins of the Castle of Asté. They are inconsiderable, and in themselves hardly deserve a visit. But they are of some historic interest, as this Château d’Asté was the second cradle of the dukes of Grammont. The barons d’Asté, early in the sixteenth century, became viscounts, and Menard d’Aure, Viscount Asté, had the good luck to marry the heiress of Grammont. Thenceforth his descendants assumed the title of counts of Grammont and viscounts of Asté.

Their principal residence now became Grammont, in Labourde, on the Bidouze; but for hunting the wolf and the bear, and in the heat of summer they came to Asté. Here it was that the amorous Henri Quatre was wont to visit la belle Corisande, wife of Philibert de Grammont, who died at the age of twenty-eight, in 1580. Diana, or la belle Corisande, was the only daughter of Paul, Viscount Louvigny. By her husband she had Anthony, Count of Grammont, and Guiche, also of Louvigny, Seigneur of Bidache, Viscount Asté, Viceroy of Navarre, Governor and Perpetual Hereditary Mayor of Bayonne. One of his sons, Philibert, married Elizabeth, daughter of George, Earl of Hamilton. Her picture is in the National Portrait Gallery, and one wonders, looking at it, how she could have been called “la belle Hamilton” in the French Court.

Philibert and Elizabeth had a daughter, Claude Charlotte, who married Henry Howard, Earl of Stafford. It was of Philibert, born in 1621, and who died in 1707, that the entertaining memoirs were written by Anthony Hamilton. It has been well said: —

“The history of Grammont may be considered as unique: there is nothing like it in any language. In drollery, knowledge of the world, various satire, general utility, united with great vivacity of composition, Gil Blas is unrivalled; but as a merely agreeable book, the Memoirs of Grammont perhaps deserve that character more than any which was ever written; it is pleasantry throughout, and pleasantry of the best sort; unforced, graceful, and engaging. Some French critic has justly observed that if any book were to be selected as affording the truest specimen of perfect French gaiety, the Memoirs of Grammont would be selected in preference to all others.”

In the church of Asté is a white marble statue of the Virgin that is an object of great veneration; also a painting attributed to Philippe de Champagne. The village of Beaudéan was the native place of the surgeon Larrey, born in 1766, who behaved with great self-devotion in the battle of Eylau and the retreat from Moscow. Napoleon I said that he was the most honest man he had ever known, and the most disinterested. He created him a baron, and bequeathed to him 100,000 francs. Larrey died in 1847. The house in which he was born is a humble cottage; he bequeathed it to the parish that it might be turned into a school.

Campan, that gives its name to the somewhat overpraised valley, is chiefly known for the marbles it produces. The peristyle of the Grand Trianon, the new and vulgar opera-house at Paris, have employed this splendid marble. Even Berlin has had recourse to its quarries for twenty-two columns of the royal palace.

There are several mountain tarns more or less accessible from Bagnères. That most easily reached – but taking six hours – is the Lac Bleu, a beautiful sheet of water of the most intense sapphire-blue, girded about by rocks of a golden yellow. It covers 98 acres, and is 360 feet deep. The spirit of utility has mounted to this height, and bridled the outflow, and uses it for economic purposes. A tunnel 900 feet long has been bored through the rocks on the north side of the lake, to draw off the water as needed in times when the Adour has dwindled to a thread, and cannot feed the channels of irrigation needed in the plain.

Other tarns are the Lac de Peyrelade, lying in a cirque under the Pic du Midi, also the Lac d’Isaby.

Many delightful valleys open out into the Val de Campan, The longest of these is that through which flows the Oussonet, that reaches the Adour some way below Bagnères; but a good road takes directly from Bagnères to the lateral valley of Labassere, famous for its slate quarries. The excavations are in the flanks of the mountain, and are numerous. The products are brought down by a funicular contrivance worked by electricity, taking the place of the zigzag road by which oxen formerly conveyed the slates below. The men who split the slates wear heavy sabots scooped out of billets of beech that have not been shaped externally, so as better to resist, should the sharp, cutting flakes fall on the feet. The men’s legs are bound about thickly with rags to protect them from the same danger, as the slate cuts like a razor. The slate-splitters form the aristocracy of the trade, and although their labour is less considerable than that of the quarrymen, they receive double the pay of these latter. For a slate-cutter has to learn the art before he is aged fourteen, whilst the muscles are most flexible. At the age of twenty he has to undergo military service, and when he returns to his shed and tools, at the age of twenty-four, finds it very difficult to recover the skill he possessed before he donned uniform.

One of the most interesting and perplexing themes connected with the Pyrenees is the origin of the Cagots, a “race maudit,” that was found throughout the chain, but not there solely. It existed as well in Brittany.

In a considerable number of churches may be seen the Cagots’ door, through which alone they might pass into a portion of the church reserved for them, and cut off from the rest, and where alone they might assist at divine worship. In some of the towns are streets called Rues des Cagots, in which these outcasts herded. At one time they were not suffered to inhabit the villages, but were relegated to isolated hamlets, and they had separate burial grounds. They might not associate with the more privileged natives, and inter-marriages with them were strictly interdicted. They were required to wear a distinctive badge – a goose’s foot in red cloth attached to one shoulder. The expression “Cagot” is still used as a term of opprobrium. But when one asks to be shown a Cagot, after some hesitation, a cretin or a poor creature afflicted with a goître is pointed out.

But the original Cagot was not such.

Jean Darnal, a solicitor in the Parliament of Bordeaux, thus describes the Cagots, whom he calls Gahets, in his Chronique Bourdeloise, 1555.

“The magistrates gave orders that the Gahets should reside outside the town on the side of S. Julien, in a little faubourg apart, that they should not leave it without wearing conspicuously a bit of red cloth. These are a sort of lepers, with the disease in an undeveloped condition, with whom it is ill to associate. They are carpenters by trade, and capital workmen, and gain their livelihood by this trade in the town and in the country.”

One notion concerning them was that they descended from the carpenter who had made the cross of Christ; and most of them, though by no means all, actually were carpenters. Florimond de Rémond, councillor of the Parliament of Bordeaux, wrote concerning them in 1613: —

“We see in Guyenne this race, commonly designated Cangots or Capots, one which although Christian and Catholic, holds no communication with others, and may enter into no alliance with other Christians; even to live in their towns is not allowed. They are not suffered to approach the Holy Table along with other Christians, and have a place set apart for them in the churches. The people are convinced that they are diseased, that their breath and sweat is malodorous, and that they are to some extent lepers. This is why that in many places, as at Bordeaux, they are constrained to wear a scrap of red cloth on one shoulder.”